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WireFlow

Reproducible AI Workflows for Research & Development

Version 0.5.0 (pre-release)

Key Features

  • 🎯 Git-like Discovery: Run from anywhere in your project tree. WireFlow walks up to find .workflow/ automatically.

  • 📄 Native Documents: PDFs, Office files, images (including HEIC, TIFF, SVG) handled natively with automatic conversion.

  • 🧠 Model Profiles: Switch between fast, balanced, and deep reasoning. Enable extended thinking for complex tasks.

  • 📦 Batch Processing: Process hundreds of documents at 50% cost savings with the Message Batches API.

  • 🔧 Config Cascade: Global → project → workflow → CLI. Set once, override where needed.

  • 🏗️ Nested Projects: Inherit settings from parent projects. Perfect for monorepos.

  • 🔗 Workflow Chains: Build pipelines with --depends-on. Outputs feed into dependent workflows.

  • 📥 Input vs Context: Separate primary documents from supporting materials for cleaner prompts.

  • 💰 90% Cache Savings: Smart prompt caching puts stable content first. Pay less for repeated runs.

  • 📚 Citations: Enable source attribution with --enable-citations. Get references you can verify.

  • ⚡ Three Modes: Persistent workflows for iteration, quick task mode for one-offs, or batch for bulk processing.

  • 💾 Safe Outputs: Timestamped backups, hardlinked copies, atomic writes. Never lose work.

Quick Start

To install wireflow, clone the repo and link the script into your PATH. For example:

# Clone repository
git clone https://github.com/jdmonaco/wireflow.git
cd wireflow

# Add to PATH (example using ~/.local/bin)
ln -s "$(pwd)/wireflow.sh" ~/.local/bin/wfw

For Anthropic requests, ensure your API key is set in your shell environment:

# Set up environment
export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY="your-key"

Try out initializing wireflow in any folder containing a project or files you want to process:

# Initialize project
cd ~/my-manuscript
wfw init .

# Create and run first workflow
wfw new 00-context-analysis
wfw run 00-context-analysis --stream

Your project files and folders are treated as read-only. All WireFlow files are maintained in a .workflow/ subfolder.

What You Can Do

Persistent Workflows: Create reusable workflows for iterative development:

wfw new analyze-data
wfw run analyze-data -cx "data/*.csv" --stream

One-Off Tasks: Execute lightweight tasks without workflow persistence:

wfw task -i "Extract key points" -cx notes.md
wfw task summarize -cx "*.md"

Workflow Chains: Build dependent pipelines with automatic context passing:

wfw run 02-analysis --depends-on 01-context --stream

Use Cases

  • Research manuscripts: Iterative analysis and writing assistance
  • Code analysis: Systematic code review and refactoring workflows
  • Documentation: Generate and update documentation from source code
  • Data processing: Multi-stage data analysis pipelines
  • Content generation: Structured content creation with context reuse

Documentation Structure

Requirements

  • Bash 4.0+
  • curl and jq for API interaction
  • Anthropic API key (get one here)

License

MIT License - see repository for details

Getting Help

wfw help              # Show all subcommands
wfw help <subcommand> # Show detailed help for a subcommand
wfw <subcommand> -h   # Quick help for a subcommand

Ready to get started? Head to the Installation Guide →